Collapse rows with overlapping ranges

Question

I have data.frame with start and end time:

ranges<- data.frame(start = c(65.72000,65.72187, 65.94312,73.75625,89.61625),stop = c(79.72187,79.72375,79.94312,87.75625,104.94062))

> ranges
     start      stop
1 65.72000  79.72187
2 65.72187  79.72375
3 65.94312  79.94312
4 73.75625  87.75625
5 89.61625 104.94062

In this example, the ranges in lines 2 and 3 are completely in the range between the “start” on line 1 and the stop on line 4. Thus, overlapping ranges 1-4 should be collapsed into one range:

> ranges
     start      stop
1 65.72000  87.75625
5 89.61625 104.94062

I tried this:

mdat <- outer(ranges$start, ranges$stop, function(x,y) y > x)
mdat[upper.tri(mdat)|col(mdat)==row(mdat)] <- NA
mdat

And now I just need to figure out how to combine all the true ones, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to go

Answer 1

You can try the following:

library(dplyr)
ranges %>% 
       arrange(start) %>% 
       group_by(g = cumsum(cummax(lag(stop, default = first(stop))) < start)) %>% 
       summarise(start = first(start), stop = max(stop))

# A tibble: 2 × 3
#      g    start      stop
#  <int>    <dbl>     <dbl>
#1     0 65.72000  87.75625
#2     1 89.61625 104.94062

Answer 2

Here is the solution data.table

library(data.table)
setDT(ranges)
ranges[, .(start=min(start), stop=max(stop)),
       by=.(group=cumsum(c(1, tail(start, -1) > head(stop, -1))))]
   group    start      stop
1:     1 65.72000  87.75625
2:     2 89.61625 104.94062

, , , cumsum. .

Answer 3

base R melt / unstack , :

ranges<- data.frame(start = c(65.72000,65.72187, 65.94312,73.75625,89.61625,105.1,104.99),stop = c(79.72187,79.72375,79.94312,87.75625,104.94062,110.22,108.01))
ranges
#      start      stop
#1  65.72000  79.72187
#2  65.72187  79.72375
#3  65.94312  79.94312
#4  73.75625  87.75625
#5  89.61625 104.94062
#6 105.10000 110.22000
#7 104.99000 108.01000

library(reshape2)
ranges <- melt(ranges)
ranges <- ranges[order(ranges$value),]
ranges
#   variable     value
#1     start  65.72000
#2     start  65.72187
#3     start  65.94312
#4     start  73.75625
#8      stop  79.72187
#9      stop  79.72375
#10     stop  79.94312
#11     stop  87.75625
#5     start  89.61625
#12     stop 104.94062
#7     start 104.99000
#6     start 105.10000
#14     stop 108.01000
#13     stop 110.22000

Now, as can be seen from the above (with one reasonable assumption that we have an initial value, which is the smallest of all values, and a stop value, which is the largest of all values), the problem boils down to finding a pattern stop, which follows startin sequential lines , and this will be the only thing that interests us (to find overlapping ranges), except for the first and last lines. The following code allows:

indices <- intersect(which(ranges$variable=='start')-1, which(ranges$variable=='stop'))
unstack(ranges[c(1, sort(c(indices, indices+1)), nrow(ranges)),], value~variable)
#      start      stop
#1  65.72000  87.75625
#2  89.61625 104.94062
#3 104.99000 110.22000